The present disclosure relates, in various representative embodiments, to electronic devices and materials suitable for use in such devices as well as fabrication processes for electronic devices and components thereof. More specifically, the present disclosure relates to electronic devices incorporating a phase-separated dielectric structure as well as fabrication processes for such electronic devices and phase-separated dielectric structures.
Thin film transistors (TFT) are fundamental components in modern-age electronics, including, for example, sensor, imaging, and display devices. Thin film transistor circuits using current mainstream silicon technology may be too costly, particularly for large-area devices (e.g., backplane switching circuits for displays like active matrix liquid crystal monitors or televisions) and low-end applications (e.g. Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) Tags), where high switching speeds are not essential. The high costs of silicon-based thin film transistor circuits are primarily due to the capital-intensive fabrication facilities and the complex high-temperature, high-vacuum photolithographic fabrication processes under strictly controlled environments.
Because of the cost and complexity of fabricating silicon-based thin film transistor circuits using conventional photolithography processes, there has been an increased interest in plastic/organic thin film transistors which can potentially be fabricated using liquid-based patterning and deposition techniques, such as spin coating, solution casting, dip coating, stencil/screen printing, flexography, gravure, offset printing, ink jet-printing, micro-contact printing, and the like, or a combination of these processes. Such processes are generally simpler and more cost effective compared to the complex photolithographic processes used in fabricating silicon-based thin film transistor circuits for electronic devices. To fabricate liquid-processed thin film transistor circuits, liquid processable materials are therefore required.
Most of the current materials research and development activities for plastic thin film transistors have been devoted to semiconductor materials, particularly liquid-processable organic and polymer semiconductors. On the other hand, other material components such as dielectric materials have not been receiving much attention.
In embodiments, it is desirable for the materials for the dielectric to have a number of attributes including for example the following: (1) a good electrical insulating property; and (2) a good compatibility with the semiconductor materials. An issue with conventional gate dielectrics is that it may be difficult to accommodate all the desired attributes for the dielectric materials via a simple process. Accommodating the desired attributes (1) and (2) is accomplished by embodiments of the present invention.
The following documents provide background information:    Lopatin et al., U.S. Pat. No. 6,528,409.    Foster et al., U.S. Pat. No. 6,706,464.    Carter et al., U.S. Pat. No. 5,883,219.    Bai et al., U.S. Pat. No. 7,098,525 B2.    Sugiyama, U.S. Pat. No. 6,809,371 B2.    Antonio Facchetti et al., “Gate Dielectrics for Organic Field-Effect Transistors: New Opportunities for Organic Electronics,” Adv. Mater., Vol. 17, pp. 1705-1725 (2005).